UAV’s have recently attracted significant amount of attraction due to
their wide spread application. Be it reconnaissance, surveillance, mapping or rescue
missions, UAV’s are indeed proving to be a versatile and cost-effective solution.
This has resulted in a lot of research effort being put into making UAVs more and
more robust and increasing their efficiencies in terms of range, power consumed,
endurance etc.

Utilizing solar energy to power vehicles is another call of the hour. Keeping these two in mind we, at IITK, are working to develop solar powered UAVs. MARAAL is the project under which development of indigenous solar powered UAVs is taking place.

MARAAL-1

MARAAL-1 is the first Indian solar powered UAV. It is a low-altitude long endurance solar-electric powered UAV which increases the endurance with the additional usage of solar cells in combination with batteries to power the UAV.

It has completed several successful test flights starting with its maiden flight on 1st Feb 2016 to help researchers gather useful real-time flight performance data.

Specifications

Weight

16 Kg

Power Required to Cruise

210 Watt

Solar Power Extraction

170 Watt (Avg, 1st March 2016)

Service Ceiling

500m AGL

Endurance

11 Hrs

Gliding Ratio(L/D)

18

Payload

5 Kg

MARAAL-2

MARAAL-2 is a medium altitude, long range (up to 200 kms), fully
autonomous and mission programmable, solar powered UAV. It offers ultra-long endurance and
quiet operation. This has larger area for solar power extraction than MARAAL-1 and the trim drag is minimized with improved design. The solar power extracted during the cruise in good sunny condition was recorded much more than the power required for cruise (maximum range conditions). The ground
control station console is functionally interchangeable and allows highly interactive
mission planning and re-tasking.

The key person behind development of MARAAL UAVs is research scholar Vijay Shankar Dwivedi who is doing this as his Ph.D work and led the design & development of these under valuable guidance of Prof A. K. Ghosh. Aero modeller Amulya Adamane has worked tirelessly on physical design & fabrication. He has also provided his valued support as test pilot during the testing phase. The important names associated with the project are: